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Brian Hoadley

Transformation and organizational design consultant and leader

Case Studies

Purplebricks

Purplebricks

Goal: To establish and embed an in-house Design Research, Optimization and Insight function (Customer Labs)

Impacted Teams: Research, Insight, Optimization, Design, Digital Customer Experience, Product Management

Team size: 40

Location: London, Bristol, Halifax, Edinburgh

Introduction

A major U.K. bank was going through a large-scale transformation. Having built an in-house research lab in their digital center, they wanted to explore developing an in-house research team to support their transformation efforts.


When I was brought in, I had one lab and one contract UX researcher at my disposal. Shortly after joining, recruitment was frozen. So what to do.


I used the time to conduct a cost-benefit analysis using external agencies. I looked at the average cost per study, what types of research were being conducted, and ran an analysis on the total cost of hiring a researcher and total number of studies they could reasonably conduct in a year. I factored in support costs and built a model to understand the true cost of external supplier use vs. in-house development of a research capability.


When the time came I delivered a business case that received funding. Over two years, I worked with this client to design an in-house research agency, and grew the team to 40 researchers, insight analysts and A/B testing specialists.


The team had extremely high employee engagement scores, was a desirable destination for others in the bank, helped reduce reliance on external suppliers, reduced overall cost per research activity, contributed to a reduction in developer rework, and improved customer engagement with the bank's digital products and services.

Brian Hoadley

Transformation and organizational design consultant and leader

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Case Studies:

Purplebricks

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